IF the words of Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Audu Ogbeh are anything to go by, farmers may pay the Federal Government to provide them with security against kidnappers and herdsmen.
According to the minister, the government was considering various measures to protect farmers, saying that kidnapping would not stop but that government was determined to protect investors. Ogbeh said: “I had a meeting with the Minister of Interior, we were looking at security situation in agriculture. Sometime last year, some gunmen went to Olu Falae’s farm, a Nigerian in status, in age and ranking, and took him away and marched him around, forced him to trek ten kilometres, even carried him on their backs.
“Many more farmers are coming in, including foreign investors, and they stand the risk of being subjected to this kind of humiliation.
“So, we are talking with the Ministry of Interior that we have to put measures in place. These things are happening in other countries too, where the civil defence corps may have to train a special department to protect huge investors and investment in their farms for a fee, because kidnapping will not stop.
“From the security point of view, we have to take measures to make sure that people who invest are protected.
“In other countries of the world, you may have noticed that people live in their farms, you hardly see a farmer who lives in the city, he lives in the farm with his family, you cannot do that here. They will come and take you, your wife and children in the name of kidnapping, we have to stop it and we have to use the legitimate instrument of state to do it because the farmer has no right to buy a gun to protect him.”
‘Agro Ranger’ to the rescue
About 3,000 personnel of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) are being drafted by the Presidency to protect farms and agro-allied investments nationwide against attacks by herdsmen and gunmen. The personnel to be named ‘Agro Rangers’, are to be specially trained to protect the farms and mediate in conflicts between farmers and those attacking them.
The Interior minister, Gen. Abduraman Dambazzau, who dropped the hint in Abuja, said the planned deployment would complement the police, who are being overstretched in the maintenance of law and order.
The minister said: “We know that the police are being over-stretched in terms of maintaining law and order while the military is also battling insurgency.
“So, this falls within the purview of the NSCDC. The Agro Rangers will be trained in the protection of agricultural assets and mediation in issues such as land disputes.”
The minister said that although Nigeria is a signatory to the ECOWAS Trans-Human Protocol on Free Movement which allows herdsmen from the sub-region into the country, all the necessary precautions such as registration and possession of valid travel documents would henceforth be enforced.
He admitted the threat of herdsmen as one of the security challenges that has not only assumed a regional, but continental dimension.
“The issue of herdsmen is seen as localised. It has both regional and continental dimensions. As long as we remain under the ECOWAS protocol on free movement, the problem will remain”, he said.
The minister reminded that the 36 states have a big role to play in checking the activities of herdsmen, stressing that some of the routes that were hitherto carved out for the movement of cattlemen had been turned into farms.
Source: The Nation
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